Inventory Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Inventory Management - Essay Example This type of inventory management also enables Toyota to quickly adapt to the demand conditions and prevent wastage of expensive inventory (Monden, 2011). Samsung Electronics is one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturing companies. Samsung follows the Short Cycle Time and Low Inventory in Manufacturing (SLIM) type of inventory management system. It is the largest company, which manufactures digital integrated circuits. The company with the support of Leachman’s consultants had developed the SLIM inventory management technique whereby optimal use of resources gets facilitated. The SLIM inventory system has helped Samsung to calculate cycle times required in individual manufacturing stages and the time required in work in process stage. SLIM inventory systems also allow implementing heuristic algorithms at the factory floor (Leachman, Kang & Lin, 2002). Toyota’s integrated production design system begins with designing the flow of inventory, framing support measures, reducing lot sizes and determining set up time. The next stage in the process is to set up total quality control measures for detecting errors and faults in the production system. The third stage is to prepare the capacity schedule, which involves analyzing the amount of work that can be taken up by individual departments at a time. The integration of goods and services design of Toyota also includes implementing the Kanban system whereby lot sizes are reduced and controlled on the basis of demand pull. Toyota also works with suppliers and vendors for estimating the real time required for goods delivery and communicating the quality related expectations (Berry, Whybark & Jacobs, 2005). The integration process of Samsung’s production system mainly concentrates upon efficient management of targeted cycle times. In order to manage targeted cycle times, it becomes essential to allocate buffer